Should Bloomberg's MTA reform plan include climate control for stations.

Depends if you believe in global warming i suppose. Most city MT authorities are so hard in debt I would come to the same conclusion as you. Take the AC/Heat while the prices are still relatively cheap.

Yes! Couldn’t they use geothermal systems, since they’re already underground?

The way the majority of NYC metro stations are built, it isn’t feasible. The stairways that lead into the stations are open all the time, so any AC or heat inside the station would escape very easily. That would force them to run the AC/heat much higher to compensate, driving costs up.

Before they introduce climate control, they must think of some way to close the stairway entrances, using doors or something. Of course, that change introduces its own difficulties: doors slow down traffic and NYC moves something like 10 million people per day.

Being stuck in a station for more than 30 minutes myself yesterday, I’d be happy if they just increased the number of trains running. The train cars are air conditioned, so if there were more trains, people would be spending less time at the stations sweating.

@drdoombot Great answer! They actually managed to get Grand Central station platform air conditioned on the 4/5/6 lines. They are working towards getting some (not all) of the other major hot spots done. Like all things in MTA, it takes time to get these things done for whatever reasons.

Adding more trains is something they have been doing. That raises another problem in itself though. More trains are added during revenue (rush) hours to accommodate the passengers. However, it causes “train traffic”. I’m sure you’ve heard the announcements on trains. Trains running back-to-back doesn’t allow for any running room and thus, slows trains down. The lines that have the worst train traffic in the IRT subways are the local 1,6,7 lines.

You also have to take into account any emergency repairs or maintenance along the lines will slow this down further. Regular maintenance and repairs are done at night and between rush hours. Only emergency work can be done during rush hours.

The BMT lines are wayyyyyy bigger than any IRT lines and this allows them plenty of running room and also creates a longer amount of time you have to wait on the platform for the next train because of the bigger headway between trains.

Fact: During the late evenings, after express services shut down, the headway between trains in the IRT (numbered trains) are approximately 10 minutes. The head between trains in the BMT (alphabet trains) are about 20 minutes. So if you happen upon a platform late in the evening and just missed one, expect to wait 10 minutes for the next one if you are taking an IRT line or 20 minutes for the next one if you are taking a BMT line. This is the general wait times without any maintenance work going on. Work is done almost every night. The type of work being done will fluctuate these wait times.

Hope this was helpful.